With the approval of their boards of directors, Making Choices Michigan (MCM) integrated day-to-day operations with the Grand Rapids based non-profit, Great Lakes Health Connect (GLHC). Effective September 1st, 2017, MCM will function as a wholly owned subsidiary of GLHC, but will maintain individual mission and leadership. As part of the agreement, GLHC Executive Director Doug Dietzman will add executive oversight of MCM to his existing responsibilities.
MCM’s Community Coordinator Carol Robinson said, “Having the conversation about treatment preferences is vital to a person’s quality of life. Making Choices Michigan helps make that happen, and we are very pleased to continue that work in partnership with Great Lakes Health Connect. GLHC’s non-profit status and mission-focused approach to facilitating the seamless flow of information for people across Michigan is highly complementary to our own business model”.
MCM is an independent non-profit organization, founded in 2010. Their mission is to encourage and facilitate advance health care planning (ACP) for the people of West Michigan. MCM has made significant strides in educating the community and advancing the value of advance care planning, and has become known as a best-in-class example of community-based ACP facilitation across the country.
“The potential to leverage our combined resources to improve access to critical health information, including Advance Directives, across the state is really exciting”, said Doug Dietzman. “Our organizations will be better and stronger together, which is a positive thing for the people of Michigan”, he concluded.
Together, Making Choices Michigan and Great Lakes Health Connect have been improving access to Advance Directives. As the leading health information exchange provider in Michigan, GLHC established an online repository for ACP documents. Organizations who work with MCM in gathering ACP information can upload the documents to GLHC’s community health record. In turn, healthcare providers can then access the documents and use the information at the point of care.